I was hanging out with new friends at a game night, and while there, we got talking about all the zombie art they had on their walls. What was most interesting about this art, was every image had them as a couple fighting zombies. I immediately knew I wanted in on this!
Turns out that they are friends with a lot of great artist, and instead of wedding gifts, they wanted zombie art. After that it just became a thing. Being new to the group, and with a completely different set of skills, I thought it would be great to have a go at it. The majority are drawings/sketches by comic book artist using an array of art techniques. However - no photography.
Of course this idea took a long time to plan out. I had no idea how I was going to create zombies for the photo. Then, all of a sudden they got this wonderfully fun board-game with all these zombie minis! I knew this was my opportunity to create the zombie composite.
I invited them over to my apartment for a photo shoot, with a variety of weapons, where they would be defending themselves from the on-slot of zombies.
After that I set up a macro photography station and began photographing the hundred or so little zombies that I would then cut out in Photoshop and add, one by one, into the composite.
To say that this took a while would be an understatement.
A few days later I realized I was missing a key component! The dogs! Their two dogs were in a few of the other art pieces fighting the zombies along side them. So I grabbed my camera and headed over to their place to get some "action" shots of the dogs.
I wanted to theme the image as if it were a page out of a graphic novel. And to keep it local I used a photo I had taken of the city skyline, here in Springfield, Illinois. The alley I found on the Adobe Stock website.
Here are a few of the images that went into making this composite...
And some behind the scenes photos of our shoot...
